Friday, March 13, 2009

Bike Girl Suffers

As a cyclist, Bike Girl enjoys a certain amount of suffering. She’ll frequently don tight clothing and pound her legs and lungs into submission. How sexy does that sound? But there is one thing that crosses Bike Girl’s threshold for pain. That thing is the saddle sore.

One would not think something that looks very much like a pimple would incapacitate a protagonist as fearless as Bike Girl. But this tiny pimple, when in Certain Places, can make riding a horrible, horrible experience.

Furious googling yields a plethora of home remedies for the tiny bumps. Bike Girl has tried a number of them, with limited success. They range from using a cream usually reserved for cow teats, to drying them out with isopropyl alcohol, to applying a steroid cream. Bike Girl’s usual cocktail is obsessive cleaning with witch hazel or antibacterial soap, followed by a dab of Tea Tree oil.

However, even with the most wonderful treatment, the only true way to get them to go away is with time off the bike. Since Bike Girl doesn’t like this solution, she generally prefers to avoid getting them in the first place.

She advises fellow cyclists to remove their sweaty, sweaty bike shorts or underpants as soon as possible after riding. While certain cyclists Bike Girl knows love to languish in their chamoises (chamoi? chamoisez?) as they eat far too much food after a ride, this is not advised. Never wear a chamois twice without washing it. Wipe down at your destination. On long rides, some readers may wish to venture into the squishy world of chamois crème. (Known more colorfully in some circles as Butt Butter)

But despite these precautions, saddles sores sometimes happen anyway. Bike Girl invites her readers to share the intimate details of their own regimens in the comments section.

I highly recommend Bag Balm if you can find it....comes in a green square tin and has a drawing of a cow on it. Take a shower and apply right before you go to bed....feels sorta squishy, but it will be a lot better by morning. I always bring a small tin while on tour....

Who Is Bike Girl?

Bike Girl is both the femme fatale and the protagonist, taking back her share of the sometimes mean streets of Los Angeles one trip at a time.
She writes with a femminine, and sometimes saucy perspective on urban cycling and public transit.